


quicker with a smile

by salienne



Category: Fringe
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-11
Updated: 2010-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It’s easy to excuse what you want.</i> A character study in the guise of a ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quicker with a smile

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through "Marionette"

The funny, the sad, the truly hideous thing was, he knew. Taking probably his fifth shot of whiskey (it wasn’t like he was keeping track) he allowed himself to think it. Allowed himself to wallow in it, to sink in and spread out his arms, shut his eyes, breathe in the gunk that somehow left his heart beating.

 _He knew._

It wasn’t as simple as looking into her eyes. That was a fallacy, the logic of a madman bonded to a corpse with atrophied neurons. When he looked into her eyes, she was Olivia. The same color, the same depth, the same ability to pull him in. The woman who had crossed universes for him.

The bangs. He’d never even thought about the bangs.

When he stands, the world wobbles, but he barely needs to brush his fingers against the seat to stay stays upright. He takes one step through the world around him. Another, another, until he realizes that it was the bar’s speakers and not the jukebox, that his brain was filling in the expected and cliché for what was really a coincidence, a song she liked in both worlds. A situation taken advantage of rather than invented.

It’s easy to excuse what you want.

The world drifts onward as he stands there, the wooden floor and half-filled wooden tables beneath the faint and red-tinted lighting. (Mood lighting they call it, right? Some mood.) A black man in a suit buys another drink.

They danced a few yards away, where the lane between seats and wall narrowed. Safely away from work, had Olivia ever been so public with John Scott, or did that boyfriend’s transparent skin and liquefying organs distort the standards by which he judged these past few months?

He collapses back at the bar and his head’s in his hands. A moment later he sees a receipt and his credit card by his elbow.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs. He lifts his head, fingers running down his face to the throat.

The bartender is white with a dark Mohawk. “Just pay it off and get yourself home, Peter. We close in half an hour anyway.” He’d forgotten the man knew his name.

He looks at the football game playing above the multicolored bottles, sees the time in the corner: 2:32 AM.

With a sigh, he signs the receipt and puts the credit card back in his wallet. He pushes himself up and slips on the coat he left on the stool beside him.

“Need me to call you a cab?” the bartender asks.

“Since when do I need that?”

His smile is crooked and meaningless, and he takes out his cell phone and shows it before walking out the double doors and shoving it right back into his pocket. The bite of the Boston wind makes him squint, look down at the edge of the sidewalk (they walked along here, and her arm was linked with his because of the cold) and already he can sense his head clearing.

“Great,” he mutters. The last thing he needs to be when he gets home is sober, so he can see the worry all over Walter when he steps inside reeking of alcohol at 3 AM.

The street here, just a few blocks from the shut superstores of Downtown Boston, is strangely deserted, as if even the drunkards have gathered up their toys and slunk off home. Every scuff of his heels against the concrete is like sandpaper against his cochlea and the wind makes him feel like a paper doll, pushing him forward even as everything around and in him is buffeted against, away.

He’s not stupid enough to want to get mugged. He’s just too drunk to think about the risk too deeply.

(Right.)

He looks up and checks the street (Maple) and angles right, towards the Macy’s and its window displays of unsettling wooden children spreading unsettling Christmas cheer. The last time he saw it was a few weeks ago now, right around Thanksgiving.

 _‘It’s bizarre,’ she said. ‘All these people gathering in Boston of all places to hear some singer. Absolutely no mind for safety.’_

 _‘It’s a yearly tradition, Liv.’_

 _‘Right, of course it is. But after everything we’ve seen, doesn’t it strike you as just a little bit misguided?’ She smiled, wide, they way he only saw now that they were back here, together. ‘Tell you the truth, it’s kind of wonderful.’_

A couple, probably college students, walk past, talking animatedly about some party, some girl, and how wasted she is and if she got home all right. His eyes follow them and they speed up, probably noticing, voices lowering. Hell, maybe they notice the glimmer. Maybe he’s cursed.

Maybe he needs to stop the self-pity before he drowns himself in it. Whatever he’s going through—

He takes his hands out of his pockets and unzips his coat to his chest, letting the air nip at his throat.

Better this than (I’m sorry) that.

\---

Ten minutes later he’s standing on a sidewalk with trees planted at intervals, where the road is wide enough for a two-truck collision. He holds out a gloveless hand and a yellow cab slows and stops a few yards down the street from him and he jogs slightly to catch up. He opens the door into the warmth and all but dives in.

“Where to?” the man up front, foreign accent, asks.

“27 Wilson Road, Cambridge,” he says.

“That by Central?”

“Yeah, right off it.”

The car rumbles beneath him and the sound of bad hip-hop dribbles past his ear drums as the cab heads off. Even though soon he is sweating he does not unzip his coat, does not remove his hands from his pockets. Doesn’t see the buildings or even a blur of brown through the glass.

 _‘Ma’am, I don’t need your driver’s license.’_

 _‘Right, sorry, it must’ve gotten stuck to the bill.’ Another smile, his way._

Fifteen minutes later and his eyes are shut, head lolling against the leather back. He sees skin and blond and red, sees a paper where his eyes are aflame, crumpled up like sheets. It wasn’t as simple as looking into her eyes, no. It was everything else, every other little thing that told him she was adjusted. Happy. Told him not that he was fixing her, but that she had fixed herself, maybe for him.

The car slows.

He sits up and glances at the meter: 16.65. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a crumpled twenty. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you.”

He walks the path to the front door slowly. The trees rustle, as does the grass, but the breeze is gentler. The windows are dark. When he steps up onto the front stoop he doesn’t hear ‘80s guitar or off-key singing. He wonders if _this_ toaster is still in one piece, or if the kitchen is cluttered with pans crusted by homemade hallucinogenics or saltwater taffy.

He lifts his key to the lock. Misses the first time, the cold and the way the world is spinning now. A light switches on inside. “Fuck.”

Finally he gets his key in and twists it, quickly. Better to open it himself before Walter does, what with the completely unnecessary confusion that would result with his key still in the lock and Walter saying, doing, God knows what.

(She needed less.)

Peter steps inside.


End file.
